We don’t know how lucky we are

More outrageous injustice from another of Trump’s repressive regime “good friends”

Egypt: Cairo court sentences 75 protesters to death

An Egyptian court has sentenced 75 people to death for participating in a 2013 protest against the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi.

Senior members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organisation were among those ordered executed by the Cairo Criminal Court on Saturday for their involvement with the sit-in demonstration at Rabaa Square in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The rulings will be referred to Egypt’s chief Islamic legal authority, the Grand Mufti, for a non-binding opinion. Egyptian law requires any capital sentence to be referred to the Grand Mufti before any execution can take place.

The Mufti’s decision is rarely ignored by the courts. In 2014, the Mufti rejected a death sentence proposed for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, who is part of the same case. Badie has since been sentenced to life in prison. A final verdict is expected by September 8.

No member of the Egyptian military has even been investigated for the deaths of several hundred unarmed protesters murdered by the Army when its commander El-Sisi seized power. A Middle Eastern Egyptian political commentator on Aljazeera tv described the charges against many of those condemned to death by the heavily politicised Egyptian Court as “ludicrous”, with “no evidence to support them”, as frequently happens with political rivals & prisoners in Egyptian Courts.

I expect that the sentences will all be commuted to life imprisonment, although with Egyptian courts & maybe even the Mufti being simple extensions of the ruling repressive regime – like in most Middle Eastern countries it seems – who knows?

The commentator observed that the Egyptian Courts’ lack of respect for fair trials & the repressive government’s suppression of any questioning or dissent is only likely to continue – & possibly even increase – as El-Sisi is further emboldened by the uncritical, self-serving, ever-increasing, arms sales & support of the US, UK, & other Western European governments. Like Israel’s Netanyahu apartheid regime has been.
… … …

I agree entirely, I thought to myself. But, listening to him, I couldn’t help also thinking that, while I’m appalled at the lack of any evidence of our Western democratic notions of free speech & a fair trial in Egypt & other Middle Eastern countries, Egypt has an ongoing problem suppressing ISIS & other Islamic extremists, & there was a fairly high probability that the Courts under the democratically elected-rule of The Muslim Brotherhood would become increasingly theocratised, &, given how things are elsewhere in the ME, that Muslim attacks on, and repression of, non-Muslims or dissenters would very likely be as, or more, frequent than they have been under the El-Sisi regime.

And that thank my lucky stars I was so blimmin fortunate to have been born & to live in this country, at this time in its history. Where, here, we get to whinge & whine & snarl & scream abuse & hurl mud & sex toys (if we’re loopy enuf, or aggrieved enuf, & we’ve a mind to) at our governments or their representatives, & to protest about real & imaginary injustices – to our hearts’ content – without ever having to fear getting shot, or arbitrarily beaten up & arrested, at any time, for non-violent protest, by ruthless government-sponsored thugs & torturers.

And we also don’t have to worry that some well out-of-date, oppressive, misogynistic, intolerant, savage, inhumane, diabolically awful religion might alternatively determine what our laws and penalties – for example for ‘grievous offences’ like blasphemy, & homosexuality, & starving kids stealing a loaf of bread, & apostasy, or practising or converting to another deluded Abrahamic religion – or just rationality – should be.

Whatever criticisms might be justifiably levelled at the failings of our Justice system, at least critics & political activists here are subject to the law & fairness & natural justice. And those people who our goverments do sometimes try & harass – thru the Courts, via an implausibly deniable wink to the police senior hierarchy, or thru other government agencies unquestioningly doing their political masters’ bidding – they seem to always end up having their democratic rights respected & reaffirmed, compensation often being ordered, & the agencies who stepped out of line – or outside their legal boundaries to try & silence, intimidate, or punish them – being strongly censured by our Courts.

The famous philosopher, Frederick Dagg, put it thus:
“We don’t know how lucky we are, boy. We don’t know how lucky we are.”

Well … Yes, we do, Frederick. And we should never forget it. And it’s up to every one of us to make sure it stays that way.

24 Comments

Griff

For an agnostic you are vehement in you opposition to religious nonsense.

The rule of law is a key stone in the foundation of our liberal democratic society’s success.
Attacks on the justice system are attacks to the foundations of our way of life.
Attacks like supporting Tommy Roberson and his contempt for one of the central tenets of ours,Innocent until proven guilty. Or Trump and his attacks on the investigators inquiring into his potential wrongful behavour.
No rational person should support such behavour.

Gezza

For an agnostic you are vehement in your opposition to religious nonsense.

You say that like it’s a bad thing? Of course I am. Why should an agnostic or an atheist not be?

In one way or another, the devoutly faithful of all 3 of those religions claim they are special, & their God is needed because without Jaweh et al there is no objective morality. And actually, when you read them, their holy books are full of verses saying the opposite: their heavenly fathers & many of their central historical figures are capricious monsters & confusing idiots.

I accept that these days many of the rapidly disappearing numbers of professed Christians knowledge of their own holy book is near Zero. They get a vague idea of something about it from Easter & Christmas & kind of hope when they die they’ll still pop out the other end in paradise, & with a bit of luck might see someone they miss – and that’s about it.

Griff

I share your views about most Christians.
Some are wonderful people who do follow the teachings of Christ and dedicate their life’s to helping others . The Girl is one such Christian who has spent the last thirty years at the coal face trying to help the most broken of our youth attain a better life. A major reason why she manages to cope with the never ending horror in her job is her faith.
Unfortunately.
Most conservative “Christians” dont follow Christs words they instead worship mammon.

sorethumb

Griff

No Tommy’s beech of contempt of court was a deliberate action against the foundation of justice in our democracy.
Innocent until proven guilty.
He was locked up for contempt of this process despite already having a suspended sentence for the same action.
I note some idiots are trying to fund an appeal .
The chance of a successful appeal would be vanishing small for both convictions.
Feel free to donate and waste some of your money on attacking the basis of our justice sytem .

Corky

Griff

Yess ignored.(sarc)
That is why the defendants were in court charged with rape.

If he had of waited until the court process finished he could have shouted the result from the roof tops.
Instead he was in effect acting to get the perpetrators off a conviction for their crimes .If the trail was halted due to his actions it would have made the victims go thought another trail having to repeat the process of giving evidence prolonging their agony . All this was pointed out to him on his first conviction for contempt of court.

Justice HHJ Norton’s judgment on the contempt case.

“This contempt hearing is not about free speech. This is not about freedom of the press. This is not about legitimate journalism; this is not about political correctness; this is not about whether one political viewpoint is right or another. It is about justice, and it is about ensuring that a trial can be carried out justly and fairly. It is about ensuring that a jury are not in any way inhibited from carrying out their important function. It is about being innocent until proven guilty. It is not about people prejudging a situation and going round to that court and publishing material, whether in print or online, referring to defendants as “Muslim paedophile rapists”. A legitimate journalist would not be able to do that and under the strict liability rule there would be no defence to publication in those terms. It is pejorative language which prejudges the case, and it is language and reporting – if reporting indeed is what it is – that could have had the effect of substantially derailing the trial. As I have already indicated, because of what I knew was going on I had to take avoiding action to make sure that the integrity of this trial was preserved, that justice was preserved and that the trial could continue to completion without people being intimidated into reaching conclusions about it, or into being affected by “irresponsible and inaccurate reporting”. If something of the nature of that which you put out on social media had been put into the mainstream press I would have been faced with applications from the defence advocates concerned, I have no doubt, to either say something specific to the jury, or worse, to abandon the trial and to start again. That is the kind of thing that actions such as these can and do have, and that is why you have been dealt with in the way in which you have and why I am dealing with this case with the seriousness which I am.”

Blazer

Gezza

“The U.S. debt is $21 trillion. Most headlines focus on how much the United States owes China, one of the largest foreign owners. What many people don’t know is that the Social Security Trust Fund, aka your retirement money, owns most of the national debt. ”
More …https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-3306124

Blazer

From reading it the U.S owed most of that 21 trillion to…itself.
So as money supply is dictated by the Fed which can buy and create money and lend it out to fractional reserve bankers to collect compounding interest on…it is the ultimate ..magic show.

David

Why Europe has let it be imported and spread is just dumb, the UK has similar problems from grooming gangs to the horrifying inbreeding and Sharia courts. Its hard to find any sort of a winner from mass migration and segregated communities.

PartisanZ

“Its hard to find any sort of a winner from mass migration and segregated communities.”

I’m sure many Maori people agree with you there David …

Gezza, in an Inverted Totalitarian State or ‘Managed Democracy’ it’s not about the government harassing and torturing, or trying to silence, intimidate and punish “critics and detractors”, its about the (now) built-in provisions for and abilities of governments to basically ignore them …

Gezza

Bush thought iraq would be free; he was wrong?
Rampant corruption & sectarian strife. As predicted beforehand by everybody with even a little background reading & a working brain. But that obviously excludes most US Presidents & a good number of their Congresspersons.

PartisanZ

“But that obviously excludes most US Presidents & a good number of their Congresspersons.”

Or, alternatively, that obviously implicates most US Presidents & a good number of their Congresspersons in their very own highly sophisticated and peculiarly American forms of “rampant corruption and Secular-Christian ‘sectarian’ strife” …. ???

Gezza

Most seculars probably didn’t have a bar of it. Unbelievers are inclined to be more rational & skeptical, in my experience.

You’re right about the rest of it though, Parti. What a disgraceful pack of corrupt corporate private mercenaries & other US corporate vultures were handed the keys to that country’s treasury & resources.